Hester Wells
Hester is the narrator of the first season of Within the Wires. She speaks through ten audio cassettes to a resident at the Institute, in order to help her find relaxation (and freedom) during her stay there. "People are beautiful because of where they are placed, and where they are placed is beautiful because people are in it. Not everyone understands art. Not everyone needs to. But everyone foolishly thinks, if they just found the right words, they could. Just place the painting on a white wall in a large hall, and give them a pen and a pad." '-- Hester in Cassette #6: for Oleta' Biography Early Life Hester grew up in a Society-sanctioned collective home for children along with her unnamed older brother, Oleta, and Oleta's older sister Nell.Season 1, Cassette #2: Anxiety, Stomach She and Oleta often played together, in the sand sphere and around the facility. At night they would sometimes sneak out together to look at glow worms or the stars. She was 4 months and 27 days younger than Oleta, and had her childhood memories erased at age 10.Season 1, Cassette #6: for Oleta She went on to study art and traveled around the world. For some amount of time at some point, she lived in a cottage by the sea in Aotearoa, in the same town where Roimata Mangakāhia was born. She was a fan of Roimata's, and felt she did not get the recognition she deserved. Hester met with Roimata for an interview in 1978 while she was studying art.Season 2, Cassette #10: Karikari Contemporary Gallery (1986) Finding Oleta On one autumn day, she saw Oleta again for the first time since before she was 10 and some of her memories returned. Hester watched Oleta run in the park for many days before they began smiling at each other in passing, and eventually started saying hello to each other. They met by "chance" in a coffee shop and talked, with Hester asking a lot of questions. She started reading A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin so that she could talk to Oleta about it, and she asked if Oleta remembered her, which she didn't.Season 1, Cassette #8: Awareness, Eyes Hester noticed that Oleta was paying particular attention to a woman who bore some resemblance to her, and was purposefully engineering a chance meeting in much the same way. She watched them become friends and go to dinner together, assuming they were on a date and feeling jealous. After Oleta was admitted to the Institute, she realised that the other woman had been Nell.Season 1, Cassette #5: Focus, Nose In 1980, Hester was working in the former United States along Chesapeake Bay. She described her profession as "research and technical writing" and presumably this was her work at the Institute. Hester began studying Oleta as one of her subjects for her work, although she said that this did not reveal who she really was, because people could not be removed from their natural environment and still be understood. Leaving the Institute In 1982, Hester learned that Roimata had begun painting again and she wished to leave her job at the Institute. At some point later, Hester received a letter from one of her former professors saying that Roimata had died. Partly due to this, Hester decided to produce relaxation tapes as part of her program that could be used to give Oleta messages detailing how she could escape from the Institute. She claimed she did not manage to get Oleta out of the Institute until "a few years" after 1982. Later evidence suggests that the breakout was in late 1983/early 1984.Black Box Cassette #5: HOU to LAX During her messages, she also asked Oleta to recall memories and eventually asked for a signal that she remembered what she was describing. Presumably she got it, and in Cassette #6 she expressed her impatience to enact the escape plan. This resulted in Oleta being sent to the Extensive Studies Lab and a more rushed, violent escape than she had planned.Season 1, Cassette #7: Doubt, Head With the help of Nell, Hester got Oleta away from the Institute and to the small town by the sea in Aotearoa. She mailed a final cassette to the cottage to explain the situation, and promised that she would join Oleta as soon as she could.Season 1, Cassette #10: Horopito Getting Home After cleaning up any "mess" left behind by her and Oleta that may link back to her, Hester planned to quietly and innocuously quit her job at the Institute, citing a wish to go back into art studies. She would spend a few days in her apartment, being followed and watched. She would talk to friends about plans to relax and get some sun before looking for a new job and book a room at a lakeside hotel. After returning from her "vacation" she would begin applying to jobs with deliberately bad resumes until her tails dropped off and she could continue her life unscrutinised. She expected this to take some time, possibly months. After an amount of time had elapsed that Hester apparently deemed as safe, she got in touch with a woman named Paloma who vouched for her to a pilot friend and got her started on her journey across the globe. Under the name Georgia, Hester travelled as a passenger on a cargo plane from Philadelphia to Portland. The pilot said she would have to choose a new name, and she used this name while staying with their friends Leah, Callie, and Kara in Portland.Black Box Cassette #1: PHL to PWM They noted that she seemed distant while there, most likely wishing she were with Oleta, and also that she was overly nervous about people watching her. The pilot next took her to Chicago, where they planned to have a friend, Jen, meet her and smuggle her home until she could get on the next flight.Black Box Cassette #2: PWM to MDW Unfortunately, Society agents were tailing her and she spent three weeks in Chicago evading them until the pilot could get her on a flight to Toronto, which they apologised for. They then planned to have her spend one day with a man named Gabriel under the name April Callins before moving on to Atlanta. The plan was to eventually get to Houston, and from there San Jose or Tegucigalpa, and then to Buenos Aires or Santiago.Black Box Cassette #3: MDW to YYZ However, things again did not go to plan. At some point during the week, they were involved in a car chase, where Hester drove. They escaped without any major injuries, which the Pilot credited to her excellent driving. Hester divulged her and Oleta's history to the Pilot and explained why she needed their help getting across the world, and why she was being pursued by smoking men with unpleasant dogs. The Pilot asked Hester what she'd do if Oleta wasn't in Aotearoa when she got there, but then disregarded the question as unnecessarily paranoid and cruel. They projected that at four o clock, they would land in Atlanta, and there would be a cargo ship going to Sydney from Valparaíso that their friend could get her on. In order to get on it, the Pilot would help Hester get to Santiago with the aid of some "light fraud" and a friend who was willing to switch around some flight records for them. The Pilot volunteered ("selfishly") to help get Hester all the way to Valparaíso by catching a bus or hitchhiking as they had become invested in her wellbeing and enjoyed being part of the story. They said they would be sad to say goodbye to Hester, as she had made for very interesting company. She inspired them with her very brave actions and her commitment to changing her life for the better. As they came in to land, they mused about how sometimes you just have to accept the limitations of what you're capable of. They felt like Hester would probably tell them they were wrong about that.Black Box Cassette #4: YYZ to ATL Unfortunately Robert, their contact in Atlanta, was not as reliable as they had been assured, and Hester was forced to flee without the Pilot. They thought she had ended up in Houston (specifically the west side of Houston, judging by the concentration of 'Missing Person' posters and men in sunglasses in that area), but this later turned out to be a misdirection on the agency's part. In reality, she had hitched a ride out of Atlanta, spent a couple of days in Birmingham, and then was in Jackson, before finding someone to take her to New Orleans.Black Box Cassette #6: LAX to SEA, SEA to YUL, YUL to MSY Despite the setbacks, Hester had reached Aotearoa by 1985. By 1986, she and Oleta had got married and still lived in the cottage by the sea. Hester also reopened the Karikari Contemporary as curator, following the death of Roimata Mangakāhia, and narrated an audio guide for an exhibit of her work. She indicated that she would continue to show the paintings there was a fixture, so that they didn't get damaged in her vacant house. In 1985, she had visited Roimata's home and attempted to feed her cat, although it lashed out at her and ran away. Additional info * The name "Hester" is derived from "Aster" and means "star" * Hester's favourite artist, Georgia O Keefe, was born in 1887, which presumably means she lived through the Great Reckoning. * The fake Missing Person posters that were put up during the men with cigarettes' pursuit of Hester stated that she had last been seen in August of 1983. Assuming they chose a date not too far from the present as to appear a lost cause, this puts the Pilot's trip to Houston in March 1984. References | ||}} Category:Main Characters Category:Narrators Category:Institute Staff Category:Artists